Yellowbook lawsuit against former workers? A stretch, at best

But Yellowbook, the phone book publisher, is suing former workers at eLot Recycling, a Troy company, for more than $10,000 in unpaid bills for yellow-page ads.

Four former eLot employees are listed as defendants on the lawsuit. Among them are Todd D’Alleva, a former eLot vice president who left the company in 2007, and Lisa Braga, an office manager who left shortly after.

And get this — D’Alleva and Braga (photo above) are being sued for bills from several years when they no longer worked for the company.

Yet somehow, eLot has another ad in the most recent Yellowbook publication, which landed last month on my doorstep.

“If past bills aren’t being paid,” said D’Alleva, “then I don’t understand why they’re being allowed to advertise again and again.”

I don’t understand it either. To me, the lawsuit sounds like a stretch, at best.

But Yellowbook wasn’t interested in clearing up the confusion.

The company, headquartered downstate, declined to comment on the lawsuit, saying it wouldn’t discuss confidential client accounts. The Long Island lawyer who filed the suit didn’t return phone calls.

D’Alleva now heads Electronics Recycling and Scrapping Inc., an eLot rival. So you can be sure he doesn’t want to pay advertising bills for a competitor.

“I really wish Yellowbook would deal with them and them alone,” D’Alleva said. “The rest of us shouldn’t be involved in this.”

Maish Freedman, president of eLot, said on Friday that he’s aware of the lawsuit, but is not aware of its details or whether his company owes Yellowbook.

6 Responses

Somewhat murky. It certainly sounds like a “gotcha” situation. I believe bookkeepers have been sued and/or held accountable for fiddling around with records, but I don’t think anything can be done in this situation.

Yellowbook is an absolutely horrible company to deal with. I advertised with them for my business about 8 years ago. The representitive that signed me up lost my deposit check and then left the company so they had no record of my deposit. They refused to pay for a stop payment on the check even though their rep LOST it. I had to wait six months for my bank to declare the check officially “dead”. Because of this I didn’t have a final figure to pay because if I paid the amount in full I was absolutely sure that the deposit would suddenly appear and then it would be next to impossible for me to get it back and if I paid the other amount the account would not be considered paid in full thereby making the “1 month free for payment in full” offer null and void.

Nobody at Yellowbook would admit to their mistake and they kept charging me late penalties and interest. after six months when the check “died” and they were unable to cash it even if they found it I created my own payment schedule and paid for my advertising without any late fees of interest but I promise this company will NEVER get any business from me EVER again.

This course of action by Yellowbook doesn’t surprise me as they are obviously a collection of idiots. I wonder if there are actual agreements to continue the advertising or if Yellowbook because of lack of competent bookkeeping just continued the ad to rack up additional charges. That wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

ELot has a history of not paying vendors or slow paying at best. Collection calls haunt the phone lines. Employee turnover at this company sets records. Check Hoovers report for credit. Also fined by the DEC for not processing lamps and storing them past term limits and breakage on site. Also why are dumpsters and roll off containers behind building full of electronics?? Are they going to a landfill?? How much exporting does this company do?? Definitely not a company with health, social responsibility or environmental safety as a priority. Do some research on recycling since not all are created equal. We research all our vendors before contracting.

This company is an absolute sham. The only way they stay in business is by not paying any bills. They are getting kicked out of a nice warehouse that they have not paid any rent for in over a year. My company sold them stretch film about two years ago for over two months only to realize they had no intention of paying us. After months of collection calls we finaly wrote of this account. Shortly after that I heard from one of our competitors that they had done the same thing to them. What this company does is use credit until they are cut off then they go onto the next victim.
I hope this company get put out of business sooner then later.